OreImo: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Sister

Ore no Imouto is the best anime of the season.

I am so in love with this anime that I find myself crying. We are so lucky to have it animated. Sometimes I think I can’t handle all the cute, but I can’t stop watching. I have an exam tomorrow and all I can do is rewatch the OreImo (俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない) episodes over and over. The girls are so petite and adorable and their seiyuus are just perfect. The anime has all the humor and fanservice you could want.

When Kirino and Kuroneko get into their heated discussions, it just reminded me so much of all those times I’m chatting with my friends about anime. When Kirino tells Kyousuke that her love for moe can’t be explained, that’s how I feel! It’s just a feeling we otakus have and it’s a wonderful feeling. There’s just so many different ways you can read Kirino’s reactions and moods! It’s an anime that keeps revealing new things to me every time I watch it. The execution is so flawless that I’m afraid that the series just ended every time the credits roll. Then the previews for the next episode shows up and I breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s too bad some people out there want to ruin the OreImo experience for everyone else. These are the self-proclaimed moe-haters. Every single day, they climb onto their little soapbox to broadcast their message of vitriol and negativity. What a sad way to live. These bloggers are in some sad competition to out-snark each other. Enough. Enough with the snarkiness. Anime owes us nothing. Instead of spending hours hating moe, they could simply just watch what they enjoy. Wouldn’t that be a better use of their time?

I will confess to you all, my readers, that their hostility to all that is cute and adorable almost got to me, but after watching OreImo, hnngh. To all the moe-haters, all I have to say to you is download this show for yourself and let the emotions take over. That is moe~ If you still can’t understand after that, you’re just close-minded.

Allow yourself to be in Kyousuke’s shoes. Don’t you just want to wrap your arms snugly around your younger sister and tell her everything’s going to be okay? Don’t you just love how her cheeks flush when she’s in your embrace? She’s not perfect, but she’s your imouto. The only imouto you’ll ever have.

Look at her little fangs! Look!

Wasn’t Kyousuke gallant when he took the blame for Kirino’s eroge? Isn’t sacrifice among siblings a virtue to behold and praise? I can think of nothing cooler than an aniki fighting for his sister’s rights to play what she wants to play. Eroges are part of what makes Kirino tick. If her dad took that away from her, she would cease to exist as the cute otaku sister. Censorship is stupid, anyway! If everyone was like Kirino’s dad, the industry would be in trouble not to mention the valuable fanwork.

Haters always say OreImo is unrealistic, but so what? Why should brothers and sisters have to fight? Why can’t they just get along? That’s what OreImo is all about. That’s why 2-D represents escapism. The 3-D world has enough problems for us to deal with. Anime doesn’t have to be the same.

The haters and trolls keep hammering on the fact that Kirino likes eroges featuring young girls in love with their brothers. They always seem to not notice that Kirino thinks 2-D and 3-D should remain separate! And is it not possible to play the game for anything else?

These critics don’t realize that another term for these eroges is visual novels. Make fun of eroges all you want, but I’ll bet you an otaku like Kirino have read more novels than most of us ever will. How can we make fun of that? I dare you to play Kana: Little Sister (加奈～いもうと～) and not shed a tear.

And sometimes, novels contain sex scenes. It’s just natural that visual novels would have sex scenes too. Do you think the people who read absolute epics like A Song of Ice and Fire (氷と炎の歌) harbor rape fantasies just because the novels themselves have rape scenes?

How is that even a bad thing that Kirino is into “dirty” stuff? Get off your moral high horse! Wouldn’t it be cute if you could finally talk to your sister about the latest doujinshi from Comiket? We could even form our own translation group. I would just melt if my imouto ever told me she was an otaku.

So don’t listen to the haters. They’re always taking things too seriously. They see things that aren’t even there. Sometimes a gun is just a gun.

These trolls won’t admit it but they have a hidden agenda that just shows they’re even shallower than the rest of us. They’re always trying to point out the racism of this and the sexism of that and for what?

Impressing and getting women by showing how socially aware they are? And for what? Fuck them and forget about it? Some life. “Getting women” improves your social status amongst those who hi-five people for being “playa’s.” Who gives a damn about being more social amongst those vapid wastes of food and employment?

Anime and sharing your love of anime are great ways to have fun, and enjoy things that are available to you in life. Not only this, but the making of a anime is an art form — by watching, say, OreImo, you are treated to a touching story of developing sibling love that is just overwhelmingly more fulfilling than going out, fucking some chick, hi-fiving yourself and calling it a night.

We take anime for granted folks. We have to learn to appreciate anime for what it is. Do you really want more violent robot shows? Do you really want another pretentious anime for elitists to jerk over? I’m thankful that OreImo isn’t trying to be more than what it is. It’s funny and cute and that’s all it needs to be.

To all the haters out there, moe is never going away. Moe is even more popular than ever. What an exciting time for anime!

53 Replies to “OreImo: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Sister”

Haters gonna hate! If those moe haters are so good, why don’t they make their own show then! Moe haters are cunt , vagina, dick and shit! Why can’t they understand that moe show are SLICE OF LIFE! They should be plot-less, boring and unfunny! It’s like people have their own opinions and moe haters’ opinions suck. Mainstream people are stupid! They don’t understand that Hatsune Miku is TECHNOLOGY!

Anime like MM! and Yosuga no Sora are very deep and story oriented, not like your stupid sellout hollywood movies. Anime is also not pornography, it’s full of very good show like Queens Blade, Rosario+Vampire and Kanokon. Obvious troll is obvious. WHY ARE PEOPLE DISCRIMINATING MY HOBBY!

… And yet, this might be the only 100% positive, not-halfway-backtracking “yeah I watch it and enjoy it, but I recognize all the icky parts so don’t think I’m some siscon pervert” review of this show on the blogosphere.

This entry is a parody of something that doesn’t exist. How’s that for a mise-en-abyme? ;)

I’m not even going to start with the moe semantic that you’ve been trying to prove (since OreImo isn’t really trying to prove anything), but I’d like to join in on your sentiment of simply enjoying OreImo as it is.

“Wasn’t Kyousuke gallant when he took the blame for Kirino’s eroge? Isn’t sacrifice among siblings a virtue to behold and praise?”

No, it means he’s a liar and an idiot. Taking the blame for something you didn’t do is never a good thing. If he really was doing something as ridiculous as fighting for her ability to play whatever she wants, why would he lie about it? That’s like breaking a bad law but not trying to fix the law. The problem is still there and you’re just ignoring it.

“These critics don’t realize that another term for these eroges is visual novels. Make fun of eroges all you want, but I’ll bet you an otaku like Kirino have read more novels than most of us ever will. How can we make fun of that?”

That’s a mighty fine logical fallacy. Someone (a fictional character at that) has played more porn games than me. That apparently means something. Am I supposed to respect her? Why? Am I supposed to think that it means she has, by default, a better understanding of them or something?

“And sometimes, novels contain sex scenes. It’s just natural that visual novels would have sex scenes too. Do you think the people who read absolute epics like A Song of Ice and Fire (氷と炎の歌) harbor rape fantasies just because the novels themselves have rape scenes?”

I’d say it’s safe to assume that works like A Song of Ice and Fire with rape scenes aren’t meant to be arousing or essentially fapping material. You’d have to be in denial to claim that that is the case with most visual novels, especially eroge. Take a look at Ore no Imoto and tell me the main character isn’t pandering to various fetishes: constantly blushing tsundere, obvious hints at brother/sister incest, zettai ryouiki and a little sister that secretly plays porn games. I haven’t even watched the show and I already know that much. How much more obvious could it get?

“Impressing and getting women by showing how socially aware they are? And for what? Fuck them and forget about it? Some life. “Getting women” improves your social status amongst those who hi-five people for being “playa’s.” Who gives a damn about being more social amongst those vapid wastes of food and employment?”

Oh yes, because the only reason anyone could want less sexism is because they want to pick up dem chix ‘n fuck then drop it.

“To all the haters out there, moe is never going away.”

You know what else isn’t going away? Racism, illness and crime. Does that mean those are good? Arguing that something is good because it’s not going away or because it’s popular is another fine logical fallacy.

This whole thing is so full of arguments that are broken or that don’t have any meaning that I simply can’t imagine it being serious. You got me to reply, but you didn’t make me fall for it.

It is not sarcasm nor an attempt to troll. It is not technically a parody. Something akin to this post does exist out there on the internet — just in bits and pieces. Everything you see above are honest opinions; they’re just not mine. The piece was an attempt at a pastiche.

A certain Ore no Imouto thread linked to this blog so I read it out of curiosity. In it, I discovered some of the same arguments you see above. These opinions, however, were always fragmentary and composed of one to three sentences at best. This gave me the idea of pooling these arguments together to rephrase them in a way that would compose a single continuous statement in support of the anime. In addition to that thread, I also looked at some blogs and the comments left by the show’s fans.

What exactly was my purpose for doing this? Mostly out of fun, mostly out of experimentation. Instead of merely providing my (most certainly negative) opinions of the show, I just wanted to amplify the opposite end of the spectrum this time. To what effect? Well, different people certainly got different things out of it.

The intention was certainly not to troll. To the supporters of Ore no Imouto, it is simply echoing exactly what your fellow fans are saying. Pick an argument in the post and I could provide the source — yes, someone was literally afraid that the show ended every episode only to be comforted by the previews, just to name one example. I wasn’t aiming to fool anyone — why would I? These are honest opinions of the show!

Keep in mind that I said you’d find the anime interesting (as a particularly revealing look at the modern otaku fandom and what they like in their anime), but not enjoyable. I knew it would be far too moe-centric for you to find it enjoyable.

I honestly didn’t think you’d react *this* negatively to Ore no Imouto, though, as I feel the show has some degree of sophistication to it. Not in the degree of realism to it, but rather in how a lot of it is concerned with justifying eroges and the wider otaku lifestyle in a way that feels almost like a work of political activism.

Anyway, this was a brilliantly creative post on your part, and a pretty fun read. It does leave me wondering a bit, though, about what your actual take on this anime is. Should I just assume that your honest opinion is more or less the opposite of each and every one of the arguments made in this review?

Finally, I apologize for recommending this anime to you if you feel that such an apology is necessary. ^_^;;

What was negative about this post? Isn’t it entirely positive of Ore no Imouto?

It does leave me wondering a bit, though, about what your actual take on this anime is.

What I find interesting is that I put almost none of my take into the post, yet people nevertheless think they can glean from it my position on Ore no Imouto. This isn’t a criticism or anything, just an observation.

I don’t get it. Why are we throwing out these comments as if we’re trying to change each other’s minds? Despite the fact that this is exactly what I’m doing I just want you all to know that we all have different opinions and I don’t care what they are. I love Moe, and I LOVE OreImo. I also love the incognito smiley at the bottom of the page.

Wait, weren’t you the guy decrying yuri in general to be unrealistique and terrible in that poorly thought out Sasameki koto bashing article that completely ignored that women doing sports isn’t women being “manly”(which alone would be a hugely sexist double standard on your part)…

…and you think Oreimo is awesome? Wow. Well, that’s saying everything. My work is done. Honestly, just say that you think gay stuff in general shouldn’t exist and don’t pretend it’s about quality when you like something like OreImo.

Haha you tried to anonymously troll an article written more than a year ago that has obviously tortured you since, but instead got trolled by a completely unrelated piece of parody. I’m gonna go ahead and take this as further evidence that Sasameki Koto did indeed suck.

To say just one more thing in general (i.e. this is directed at no one in particular), it has been extremely interesting for me at least that the OreImo supporters think this post is a sarcastic troll and the OreImo haters think it’s unabashed and honest support of the show. It’s clear that — no matter what — people are ready for a fight even when there isn’t one!

You people are way too into this and I can’t begin to tell you how many holes there are in your arguments. But even if it was a solid argument, you wouldn’t be able to change the simple fact that people will either:
-Like it for what it is (cute and amusing) or,
-Hate it because they can’t.

And. It’s. As. Simple. As. That.

OP and ensuing comments made me facepalm like I’ve never facepalmed before.

There are 2 things you can count on in this world: corruption, and inconsistency. If you learn to see when these waves of truth are going to happen, you can turn them towards your benefits. This show… falls under inconsistency and doesn’t benefit anyone. At first I thought “hey, a show with this much publicity, good or bad, has to be worth something.” Poor me. Not only was the plot terrible with only 4 focal (dynamic, susbstanital, w/e) characters, but the theme of the anime stayed the same throughout. Let’s say I liked the story, let’s say I wasn’t so picky and thought the un-dynamic characters and un-changing story was enough. Then I wouls move onto the WTF factor. I understand this defense of pornography, it’s normal for adolescense to be curious about their opposite sex. But a girl watching littler girls (sisters) getting raped by their boyfriend’s and watching it WITH HER BROTHER (very subliminal messages by the way) is NOT okay. That’s borderline “needing help”. And the last and most upsetting/annoying feature of this senseless and terrible show, is the ending. She leaves for America? She doesn’t? WTF? The only way to understand the rest is to read the manga, which by the way hasn’t come out in America, and I am not gonna waist more of my life watching this girl develop sexual feelings for her BROTHER and try to hide it with porn. The End. Let another anime like this never come out again.

Oreimo was the first anime ever watched, the final episode nearly had me to tears! I love Oreimo, FUCK what the haters think, they say it’s unrealistic? So’s like, 99% of all anime’s!!! I wish they would just continue the series, every time Kyousuke’s been there for his sister, I always wish I could’ve been there for my sister. Let the hater’s hate, they can’t stop us from waching. :]